Snaps are an incredible new packaging format for Linux from Canonical.[1] They offer application confinement and increased portability while also simplifying the development workflow. Recently I submitted a pull-request to extend the Sublime Merge snap with support for arm64 so that I could use it on my Pinebook Pro. Testing the snap locally required I figure out the process on the arm64 architecture. There is a little bit of tweaking required as its still early days for this, but that’s why I made this tutorial!

Tutorial

This tutorial is run on Armbian’s release of Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa for the Pinebook Pro.[2] Your mileage may vary a little bit on other distributions. You should be comfortable using the command-line on Linux, managing Unix group membership, executing privileged commands with Sudo, packaging and installing snaps, and obtaining source with Git. That was a mouthful, wasn’t it? If you made it this far you probably know all of that stuff anyways, so let’s jump right into it!

  1. Install Snapcraft.

    ➜ sudo snap install --classic snapcraft

  2. It’s still early days for LXD on the 64-bit ARM architecture, so install the latest candidate release.

    ➜ sudo snap install lxd --channel candidate

  3. To avoid having to use root for LXD, add your user to the lxd group.

    ➜ sudo usermod -a -G lxd $USER
    Only place users you trust with root access in the lxd group.[3]

  4. Now that LXD is installed, it must be initialized.

    ➜ lxd init --auto

  5. Get the snapcraft YAML file for an application that supports building on the arm64 architecture, such as the hello-snapcraftio example project.

    ➜ git clone https://github.com/ubuntu-core/hello-snapcraftio.git

  6. Change into the project root or the directory containing the Snapcraft YAML file, usually located in a snap directory.

    ➜ cd hello-snapcraftio

  7. Build the snap, using LXD to drive the containers.

    ➜ snapcraft --use-lxd

    Snapcraft usually manages containers with Multipass. Unfortunately, Multipass has outstanding issues on the 64-bit ARM architecture. This can be worked around by using LXD to handle the underlying containers.

    If you run into issues with LXD here, you might try a good old fashioned restart.

  8. Now, install the .snap file created in the current directory by the previous command.

    ➜ sudo snap install --devmode --dangerous hello_*.snap
hello 2.10 installed

  9. And the magic moment, run your new snap!

    ➜ snap run hello
Hello, world!

  10. To clean things up, remove the hello snap.

    ➜ sudo snap remove hello

Conclusion

Now you know how to get up and running with building your snap packages locally on a 64-bit ARM device. Happy snapping!

1. Yes, Flatpaks are great too.
2. This isn’t legitimate Ubuntu, as the kernel is maintained by the Armbian project, fyi.
3. LXD README: Security